Science Does Not Equal Big Science

Centuries ago, when science was young, it was possible to make contributions to scientific knowledge through simple experiments. You could be a hobbyist or a “gentleman scientist” and discover something fundamental about the world around us.

But in the past several decades, science has gotten bigger. In this era of Big Science, we need large teams of scientists working together to make discoveries in everything from the life sciences to high-energy physics. And we need lots of money to do this. The era of the lone scientist doing small-scale science seems to be over.

And that is often the narrative we hear. When the Higgs boson was found, it wasn’t discovered through an elegant experiment using an apparatus developed in a garage. It was found using a massive technological construction and thousands of scientists working together.

So is small-scale science over? While the trends clearly point to the advent of team science, small and clever science—the realm of the tiny budget or the elegant experiment, or sometimes even the hobbyist—is by no means over.